[Freedombox-discuss] Iomega iConnect lessons for FreedomBox
Les Orchard
l.m.orchard at pobox.com
Thu Mar 24 13:40:35 UTC 2011
On 3/24/11 8:56 AM, James Vasile wrote:
> Tremendously helpful writeup. Thanks, John.
>
> "One thing well" should be our mantra. It's guidance I try to follow
> in my own life. Even when the box grows more functions, it's good
> advice-- when using it as a NAS, users shouldn't have to compromise
> on interface or experience because the thing is also a tor node.
Something I think is interesting here, comparing on-the-shelf gadgets
with a Debian distribution:
Commercial gadgets are very good at hiding the guts, even when they
happen to be Linux-based. Occasionally, they tolerate some tinkering,
but only in rare celebrated cases (eg. the Linksys WRT54g)
In our case, we're working from the opposite direction. That is, we have
a pile of Debian-based ingredients from which to tinker and build a
FreedomBox, but we'll at some point need a unified umbrella of user
interface and convention to tie together disparate parts. That seems to
go against the grain a bit, I think, but needs to be addressed in some way.
At Mozilla, we have a UX design team: http://planet.firefox.com/ux/
Their decisions are sometimes controversial, but there are at least
people considering the issues overall and making the decisions.
> Bulletproofing is important but can only take us so far. We have to
> think hard about end-user support. The usual "Find us in IRC and
> hope nobody insults you." isn't sufficient here.
+1
> I'd love to hear ideas on how we support end users and prevent
> early-adoption failure.
FWIW, we have this at Mozilla: http://support.mozilla.com/
That combines wiki pages, question/answer forums, and an occasionally
open live chat - mostly driven by volunteers. The software behind it
(named Kitsune) is all open source as a Django web app, though it's not
well-packaged by any means.
I'm not sure whether this particular software is appropriate for the
FreedomBox, but it's working pretty well for Firefox
--
l.m.orchard at pobox.com
http://decafbad.com
{web,mad,computer} scientist
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